


Once Loved, Always Feared

by Twilit



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, pairing hidden for reveal purposes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:45:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3184280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twilit/pseuds/Twilit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Handmaid has been a singular figure throughout Alternian history. Herein is but a glimpse at the forces that shaped her, the trolls that had to fear her, the Empress that came to hate her and the one that found a space for her in her heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Always

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AliveArsenic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliveArsenic/gifts).



> Prompt: Anything on the Handmaid would immensely please me. I don't know, she was kind of Death incarnate, and it must have been really lonely walking alone for years and years. Something about her job as the killer of all things would be so nice ! I've always wondered how she felt, what she looked like !

You are barely ten sweeps old when The Lord sends you forth for the first time. Many others of your blood colour could not so much as claim ten sweeps as barely, that period of time being half their average lifespan. But for you, you who have seen something of The Lord’s designs, you know that these ten sweeps are not even a drop in the bucket.

So at ten sweeps old, you enter the nightmares of Alternia. Not even into your final moult, you find the cavern with the mothergrub, stepping past wrigglers as they make their first steps out into the night. Already lusii gather around the edges of the cave where your work is to begin. To prepare for the arrival of the meteors, this planet must be shaped, carved, sculpted. This mothergrub will spawn forth trolls charismatic enough to quell the more violent tendencies of the species, set them on a less suitable path. 

Less suitable for The Lord, anyways.

In the caverns, more wrigglers crawl past you, an undulating wave of youngflesh, their high-pitched chittering beginning to grate on you, you who are so used to interminable silence in green rooms and soft, sedate conversations. One mistakes your foot for an obstacle and tries to climb up it. You shake it off in irritation and turn to the naked guardians of this place. Jadebloods, drawn here sweeps ago by the pheromones of the mother grub, tend to unhatched young, some glowing with eerie phosphorescence . Those that see you regard you closely. You know that in your time they would strike without mercy.

This is in part why you are here. To make that mark in the genetic memory of your people. Your psychics spark and the carnage begins. Minutes later, it is over. At the mouth of the cave, a single, crippled jadeblood crawls silently out into the dark. You let her go. One was supposed to live. Spread word.

You close your eyes and let the timestream claim you, sucking you forwards, forwards, ever forwards, to the cusp of existence, the end of time. 

You arrive at your room, and run for the toilet. You vomit. It goes on for a while.

* * *

“Again.”

The puppet thing is relentless. You have been doing this for hours upon hours, and you are making no progress. It asks the impossible.

“It’s not impossible, child. It is simply very difficult. Probably beyond your capabilities right now, all things considered, but I wouldn’t bet on that.”

“Then why are you making me DO this?” you snap, yelling at him. You get the impression of a raised eyebrow behind that implacable white facade.

“So that one day you can. Now, again.”

You turn your mind to the moon buried within your moon and try to raise it. You heave and you hurl and a rainbow of sparks explodes around you as your mental bleed-over manifests. Cracks form in the balcony beneath your feet as your mind makes a level of the whole apartment building. And still, nothing.

Hours later, the sun is rising above the dead planet of Alternia above you, casting its hellish light across the green city before you. Great hivestems crumble beneath the weight of ages, the trolls that erected them millenia dead. All that remain are exiles, carapaces from a game you will never get to play, reminders that you will never have a say in your fate. You hate them, as you hate this place. In a distant corner of your mind, you know that they don’t deserve your ire, that really, they’re beneath you, but you need _something_ to direct your anger at. Something you could possibly kill, or even damage.

It will be a long time before you reconcile to the fact that none of you have a say in your fate.

* * *

The first large-scale battle in Alternian history unfolds beneath you. Two massive armies clash before you and the noise is incredible, even from this altitude. Seadweller nobles stand to the rear of either side, delighting in the murder that the lowbloods carry out in their names. They could indulge in the battle themselves, but it isn’t the fashion to fight anyone but other seadwellers and the ritual duels have already been concluded prior to the fight.

One massive block of armoured lowbloods charges into the flank of another and you see it buckle, see the trampling begin. This is where the battle turns, where the greatest slaughter of this generation will happen. It is as good a time as any. You raise your hands, raise your wands can call on the clockwork majykks to bring time to a crashing halt. 

You can smell the fear, the confusion of so many trolls, held helpless in the grim of unmoving time. You float down from the skies above, sparking psychics bringing your moulted form among the warriors. With great care and gravitas, you pass before each and every one of their eyes, make sure that they all see you. Looking every last troll in the eye takes time, but you have it. You pass the seadwellers, let them see you, let them know that there is worse out in the world than them. And then you rise above them all again, raise your arms, and with infinite care, begin to weave majykks with psychics.

You conduct a dance of death in slow motion, eyes closed, as if listening to a tune that only you can hear. The fear is a rank thing now, virtually clouding the battlefield as soldier after soldier dies on swords and spears they can see coming, but can do nothing about. An arrow is loosed and you make sure to guide the errant thing right into a highblood’s eye socket. A bronzeblood trips, falls flat and three more trip over him to be impale on vicious serated spears. He will live, they will die.

He will carry word on. 

The battle would have resulted in a unified Alternia too early. They must war upon each other more, be oppressed further, indulge in the blood-madness for longer before She will rise to rule them.

* * *

As your reward for doing as instructed in this case, the puppet and The Lord allow you a vision of Her. The one who will eventually set you free, the one who will kill you. Deep beneath the dark ocean waves of Alternia, something moves. It is white, enormous, mind-shatteringly huge. Even so, in the bloom of the abyss, you can barely see it. What bits you do see are lit by the bioluminescence of a tiny thing, flitting about the tentacles and pseudopodia of the thing.

Here she is, then, a bare, naked thing not eight sweeps old and already bedecked in more gold and jewelry than you’ve ever seen in your life. She hasn’t hit her second moult and her eyes are huge black orbs here, ringed in the faintest yellow and the wide gash of her mouth reveals teeth able to tear the flesh from the deepest predator. The only sign of who she will be is the tinge of her luminescence. Tyrian purple, a colour only seen once in a thousand generations. The last time a tyrian lived, trolls did not have language.

And so here she is, a pale grey thing, cavorting in the depths beside a beast that could destroy the planet. That will.

She turns, glimpses you, and then you are gone.

* * *

There comes the day when the puppet releases you to its master, The Lord, presenting you as its finest creation. You hate every word that leaves its non-mouth, every mock-loving gesture it makes at your form. You loathe the way they look at you with something more than avarice. The only enjoyable part of the whole mess is the way the damnable white thing collapses at the end, its strings cut.

Lord English gives you the moon as a welcome gift and disappears, leaving you in the shocking silence of the empty rooms. It is so quiet you can hear the blood in your ears, your pusher pulsing. The apartment is yours, the moon is yours, so you do the first thing that pops into your mind.

You burn the Scratch puppet. 

You burn the only companion you’ve had for decades. Not as a funerary rite, but out of spite.

* * *

The city burns. You can’t bring yourself to care. The carapaces don’t care about you, you don’t care about them. Once you tried to speak with them, and they fled in fear. Not to be discouraged, you kept trying, but their fear was too deeply rooted. You wonder what planted it in them, who affected them so strongly that your very presence caused them to shiver.

Years later, you will learn.

But for now, you watch the city burn, or a part of it. At the very least, it alleviates the boredom, takes your mind off how alone you are. In a way, there’s some enjoyment to be had, and not just from watching the flames lick higher. Schadenfreude at the loss suffered by people that shunned you.

A bitter smile cracks your face as you stare into a disaster not of your own making.

Beautiful.

* * *

Sometimes the murder is pointless, a reminder from on high to Alternia at large, a reminder that the things in their daymares are real, and can come for them at any time.

You learn to take what enjoyment you can from this. Now, you are not acting in anyone’s name. Now, you are not a chess piece in the hands of small gods. Now, you kill, maim, burn for no one’s sake but your own. Your hands run rainbow hues in exaltation of your own myth.

When you rise, entrails draped and wound through your horns, the figure you cut will be your own, what this doomed universe remembers you as. 

You may as well make the most of it.

* * *

“YOU WILL HAVE TO REPRODUCE FOR ME.”

“Excuse you?” you sputter.

“NOT HERE. BUT IN ORDER FOR THE LOOP TO BE CLOSED YOU NEED A DESCENDANT. FULFILL YOUR DISGUSTING SLURRY DUTIES AT SOME POINT. I WILL BE MAGNANIMOUS AND ALLOW YOU TO CHOOSE YOUR PARTNER.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll get right on that.”

“YOUR PROMPTNESS SPEAKS WELL OF YOU,” and then the monstrosity was gone, leaving you alone on the balcony again. 

You shudder at the idea of doing anything even remotely intimate for the hideous thing that called itsel- that was your master. You have no idea how long it will be before your end comes, you are not granted that. And though you feel lonely, from time to time, you don’t think… reproduction is in the cards.

No, correction. Reproduction is likely all that will be in the cards, because you are a singular thing, a troll raised apart from her species. You will not have the same experiences of anyone else, and you will likely not be able to even relate to other trolls the same way. Nevermind that your very presence is a curse upon them.

Reproduction might happen. Attachment, love, pity and hate?

They would have to stop running in fear, first.

* * *

The troll sprints at full speed across the wastes, intent on tracking down his prey. Shortly his end will find him, and you will hammer the nail into the coffin of the worst offender against The Lord’s plan. 

Not five hours ago, he argued with his matesprit over the fate of his prey. The knowledge it carried damned them all. It knew where the Signless would be, and it was going straight to the highbloods with it. His matesprit tried to convince him that he could not visit harm, even on a betrayer; theirs was a creed of non-violence. Distressed, the troll spoke the words of pity, love, fear that all do when wrestling with ethics.

You watched, virtually invisible in the dark, fascinated at the back and forth of these trolls. How they argued ephemeral concepts like any of it mattered. It stemmed from ignorance, you knew. You were cursed with the knowledge of how everything ends, and they were blessedly ignorant. Idly, it occurs to you to wonder if, in a way, you were a blessing for trollkind, a reservoir of terrible knowledge, a dam against certainty.

Then you shook those thoughts free, scowling and trying not to spit the sour taste from your mouth. He likely wants you to think this way, align yourself towards him. Well, he can go fuck himself. All you have for anyone is bitterness and hate.

The troll eventually breaks his matesprit’s heart, goes after the traitor with murder on his mind, deaf to pleas that he come back. In the dark, you follow. You follow at a distance for a while, trying to feel out how this will resolve, if there will be any carnage, any excitement, anything worthwhile doing. The clockwork majykks report that the near future looks as calm and still as the ocean in the fall.

You sigh, disappointed. A rock lifts up behind the running troll and you whip it at his head. You can hear the _crack_ from where you stand, see him go over the edge of the ravine. Presently you stand above him, make sure he’s dying, make sure he can see you. Then you leave him for the carrionraptors.

And that’s how you killed the Signless’s revolt.

* * *

A bloody hand punches through the last seadweller’s corpse, holding his bloodpusher out, as if in offering. Meenah Peixes, Her Imperious Condescension, well into her second millenium of rule, watches wide eyed as you rip your hand back out of the carcass.

“Holy shit,” she breathes. Her skin is darkening grey, almost black. Well past her final moult, her form is strongly muscled, her horns impressive and her hair so thick it may as well be armour itself. All around her lie the perforated corpses of those nobles who tried to do away with her. And yet, were it not for your intercession, they would have killed her. They had the numbers.

“Pathetic,” you murmur.

“Excuse me?”

Your eyes come up, fixing tyrian orbs with a rust-red stare. “I called your showing pathetic.”

“Yeah, and who the glub are you to be talkin’ shit like that to me?”

You remain silent, let the massacre speak for itself. The Condesce’s confidence wavers, and you can see her swallow.

“You really it- her, then?”

You cock your head to the side, amused. “Who?”

“The Handmaid. Handmaid to the Dem-grrk!”

You are on her in a flash, gripping her by the throat and gills tightly. She is strong, incredibly strong, so you apply your psychics to keep her foot-claws from gouging your stomach out. 

“Don’t _ever_ call me that! I am no one’s _maid_. I am _Death_ to trolls, the thing from your daymares.”

A particularly vicious punch makes its way past your psychics, but by the time it hits your cheek, there’s little enough power to it. You still throw her aside, onto the floor of her chambers. 

“And you’re going to have to do a lot better than that to kill me.”

Between hacking and coughing, the fish bitch manages, “Hey, you’re the one that attacked me.”

You snort. “Excuses. I’ll come for you one day. And on that day, you have to kill me.”

“Got a death wish, rustblood? What’s the matter, can’t do the deed yourself?”

Laughter, bitter and mocking bubbles out of you. You run your hand through stringy hair and wonder why you haven’t left this stream yet, wonder why you’re chatting with the woman who will one day kill you. Then you undo the top button of your dress. Her eyes go wide. Another. She stops breathing. You draw the fabric open, show her the puncture marks, where your wands have pierced your breast dozens of times, flooded you with power enough to fry your system a hundred times over.

“You think I haven’t tried?” you let go, let it hang loose. “You are the condition to my immortality. When you are finally worthy, I’ll come for you and you’ll kill me.”

“Worthy? I’m Empress of all Alternia, what the hell could I be more worthy of?”

You smile, maliciously. “Why, serving The Lord of Time, of course.”

Her face darkens in a glower so much like your own. “I ain’t gonna serve nobuoy, rust-blood. I ain’t as weak as you that I’m gonna take a knee to-”

You’re on her in a flash, pressing her to the floor, hands to her wrists, pinning them above her head. “Weak? You’re going to talk to me about weakness? You can’t even beat me, how do you expect to beat my master?”

Black lips peel back from a serrated grin. “I’ll think of something. Better than waiting for death, like some pathetic herdbeast, led to the slaughter.”

You reel back from that and glare. “I am not _waiting_. I am embracing it, Meenah Peixes. And one day you will too.”

Straightening, you prepare to leave this timeline, but the Condesce isn’t ready for that yet. 

“Leaving so soon?” She surprises you then with a vicious twist of her hips, rolling you over. “Come on now, girly, you can’t make advances like that and leave royalty hangin’. How about you show me how to embrace Death?”

She claims your mouth like she’s going after your jugular. All teeth and heat and tongue and void help you, you _respond_. 

Meenah Peixes has her taste of Death that day, and she decides she wants none of it.

* * *

You go back to your solitude, though memories of tyrian on your lips will stay for a long while yet.

* * *

Howalter’s Rebellion.

The Tatterdemalion Wall. 

The Battle over Sepsis IV. 

Gunner-Draws-His-Bead.

The Vast Glub.

Homecoming.

You preside over these calamities, glimpsed and feared, a reminder to all and sundry that no matter the heights that trollkind, that Alternia might rise to, Death comes for you all. 

A gasping gold-blood, yellow ichor seeping from his eyes sees a wavering shape with curling horns. Already in unbelievable pain, he screams, unwilling to face his own mortality.

A limeblood catches sight of you on the way to be rendered down and her heart skips a beat; she wishes disaster upon the entire facility and you are more than happy to oblige.

A violetblood slips from a parapet that she preaches from and sees your face in the crowd the moment before she splatters. Her face takes on a confused, outraged expression, the last she’ll ever wear. 

Before the whole ship goes up, a sea-dweller admiral looks out into space one last time. You float there, cold and uncaring, watching the death of another worthless soul. He drops to his knees.

A hundred million and more deaths are on your hands. At this point, you don’t even feel them anymore. There is but the acerbic disdain for lesser lives.

* * *

As trolls age, their skin hardens, darkens. The oldest are black mirrors, so like the carapaces of your youth. When the time comes to face the Condesce, you barely recognize her. Her hair is like a creature unto itself and her grin a jagged slash of white in a visage of purest ebony. But it is not a grin that you face now. Her teeth are bared in hatred.

“You! You said I’d face you when I was worthy! Look at this! I am an Empress of _nothing_. They are all dead!”

You nod. “How are you to serve our Master with attachments to the past left over?”

“They were _subjects_ , not attachments! My entire people, dead!”

“Then why are you so upset about their end?” You gouge at her raw wounds, mercilessly. She is still reeling from a loss that no being in the entire galaxy has felt before, not even you. Her bloodpusher may be as dark as her skin, as close to perfect as can be, but she still has one. She is not yet you, you of the gleaming obsidian chitin, and the stone heart to match.

She hurls herself at you then, and you open your arms to accept your final gift.

You have lived and killed. Loved and hated. Though your life has been one of misery and bitterness, you resolve not to end it so. You let go. Peace.


	2. Once

A cabin, in a rocking ship. The bright light of a twin-mooned sky filters through a single porthole. Its occupant slowly raises its head, aware that there is another in the room, sitting casually, rudely on a pile of fabric. Tall, curling horns draw the eye down to a figure from legend and another troll comes face to face with death.

This one is different.

“I did not think you came for every one of us.”

You blink in surprise. There is no fear here, no anger or terror. Just peace, a bit of curiosity. “I don’t. But I do like to watch the good, grand disasters unfold.”

“Oh. You are not here for me then. A pity.” The sudden downswing in her voice hits you hard. There is age in her voice, evidence of a terrible loss, a loss so great you cannot conceive of it. It evokes...

Pity. You cannot believe it.

“I might still be.”

“Oh, my grand disaster happened a long time ago now, child.”

You stand, and approach. Still no flinch of fear, though the woman does look up. Small jade eyes twinkle in the light of the moons and you sit down before her, legs roughly splayed. You cock your head to the side.

“You know that I am likely thousands of years older than you?”

“Only thousands?” she jokes. It’s terrible, but you smile all the same. You, smiling. You can’t believe it. Instinctively, you go to crush it.

“I was the one the crushed the Signless’ rebellion.”

She doesn’t start, doesn’t rage, doesn’t lash out at you. She turns away, goes back to her needlework. Blinks away a glimmering jade tear. You suppress the urge to wipe it away.

Finally, “That was a long time ago.”

Silence then, a while. You shift, uncomfortable. Maybe it’s lingering Signless teachings, but you do not think that this is normal behaviour. 

“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

She sighs, puts down the fabric once more. “What would you like me to say, spectre? Are you here for forgiveness?”

“Hey, I’m no spectre. Flesh and blood, just like you.” You prod her knee with a foot.

“Very well then, what shall I call you?”

“I’m…” A moment passes, and nothing comes out. Another, and you panic. “I… I can’t remember.”

“I beg your par-”

“Oh gods, I can’t remember my name. Why can’t I remember my- _How long has it **been?!**_ ” You skitter away from her, all curiosity, all pity gone. In its place, a primal confusion. It has been so long since you have had a conversation, you cannot remember. Your back hits the bulkhead and you barely recognize her hand coming up placatingly, but your hands soon obscure it as they come up to your face in horror.

You try to wrack your brain for the last time you heard your name being called. Did Scratch ever call you by it? Did The Lord? What about befo- _was_ there a before?

Your mind spirals out of control and you are left floating in your own head, on a boat, rocking at sea.

It is only when things still and the suns come up that you come back to yourself and then only because she shifts to draw the curtains over the porthole. You come to, your head in her lap, her hands in your hair. You start, begin to say something, but she cuts you off.

“I am sorry. I did not mean to cause you distress. Please don’t feel you need to think any more on it.”

You close your mouth and try to remember if you ever found any answers. You try to speak, and find your voice hoarse. You swallow, dryly, and only then recognize that your face is covered in cracked lines. You rub at them, and fine ruby dust flutters away. You flush at your weakness and turn away from her. But you don’t move. Eventually,

“I don’t think I ever had one.”

“Pardon?”

“A name. I went far enough back that I should remember _something_... but there’s nothing. Only… well. No names.”

“Oh…” the pity in her voice cracks your heart and now you want to run away. You are not equipped for this. As you come up, begin to rise, a gentle touch to the inside of your wrist stops you. 

“I could give you a name, if you like,” she says, almost shyly. Now she seems less that her sweeps, not the old matron, but a young blushing maiden. You wonder at what aged her so, and why it is you that brings the flush. 

You sit again slowly, composing yourself. “Maybe. Don’t rush yourself though.”

A wan smile. “I thought you like to watch incipient disasters.”

You shrug. “We have time.”

A spoken word and the clockwork majykks respond. Another, and the grinding tick of time slows, begins its tocking way backwards. She watches, wide-eyed, as a needlework comes undone, fabric refolds itself, and a box slowly opens. Her gaze moves to you.

“Should you be doing this?”

“Fuck no.” You cast your eyes to the ground and hide a smile. A hand comes to your chin to raise your chin, drag your eyes to hers.

“Well, thank you then. I will give due consideration to it.”

* * *

Due consideration takes a while. Time has no meaning in this dreamlike bubble and you speak yourself hoarse several times over in conversation with her as she drags the most minor things from you. You had more depth than you ever gave yourself credit for.

In return, you clumsily ask her the details of her life, and it quickly becomes clear that you have found another troll, so apart from her species. The pair of you are so different, but your loneliness binds you. In the dark depths of the ship, you bond, growing closer, until she tells stories from the crook of your arm. 

Time flies, but in reality not even the night rises. The sun is little more than a sliver of a threat above the horizon, but she moves to close the curtain anyways. When she returns to you, she is outlined in a halo of light, her figure dark against the dimming liminal rays of dawn. The moons have gone down and the sun is not yet due to rise. You heart thuds heavily and she looks at you curiously. You realize that your mouth is open and you clap it shut. Stilling the trembling in your hands, you extend one to her.

She takes it and gives a gasp of surprise when you pull her down on top of you. You whisper an apology, but a shake of her head stills you, her response hot in your ear. The warmth between you rises as she positions herself, straddles you between legs, through her skirts. She does not let go of your hand, but, breath coming in short little gasps, takes the other and places dark ebony on the grey curve of her neck. You take the invitation and pull her in.

Hours later, between panting gasps and back-bitten moans, she holds your face still, brushing wild hair out of the way, and whispers your name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh god what is this I didn't mean to write this don't look at me like that how did this crackship fall out of my brain


End file.
